Food Recipes Dinner Vin d'Orange Classique 5.0 (1) 1 Review One of the great anticipatory pleasures of life in the Languedoc is watching a friend get up from the dinner table, disappear downstairs into his family's cellar, and reemerge with a dusty bottle or two of richly colored liquid. These are homemade cordials or liqueurs are made from plums, blackberries, lemon verbena, green walnuts, myrtle berries, or sloe berries, among others. Vin d'orange is among the most approachable and easy to make. It's a subtly explosive fortified wine that smells like an orange grove and balances tenuously between sweetness and an edge of bitterness and alcoholic bite. Chilled with a single ice cube, it is a perfect opening act to the drama of an evening's conversation, a meal, or merely watching the sun's waning glow in the western sky. By Steve Hoffman Steve Hoffman Steve Hoffman is a food writer, tax preparer, and part-time French villager with 10 years of experience writing for local and national publications about the food of the Great Lakes North and Mediterranean France.Expertise: Northern Food, French wine and cuisine.Experience: Steve Hoffman is a James Beard Award-winning food writer who spends half of each year in his left brain, as a professional tax preparer, and the other half in his right brain, as a writer on the subjects of food, wine, and culinary travel. He splits his time between his native Minnesota and the Languedoc region of southern France. Steve dedicated four fall semesters to working with local winemakers in a tiny French village, assisting in the vineyards and wineries. His writing has appeared in numerous outlets including Artful Living, The Washington Post, Food & Wine, and the Minnesota Star Tribune, where he won an IACP Award for his article "From the Wild (Meals from a Hunter)." Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Published on August 19, 2021 Save Rate PRINT Share Close Photo: Photo by Mary Jo Hoffman Active Time: 20 mins Steep Time: 40 days Total Time: 40 days 20 mins Yield: 8 to 10 Cook Mode (Keep screen awake) Ingredients 2 medium Seville or navel oranges (about 1 lb. 2 ounces) 1 (750-ml.) bottle dry white wine (such as Faugères or Languedoc) 6 ½ tablespoons (3 1/4 ounces) 151-proof grain alcohol (such as Everclear) or 1/2 cup (4 ounces) 120-proof grain alcohol (such as Everclear) ¼ cup cane sugar 1 teaspoon dried culinary cherry bark (optional) Directions Using a vegetable peeler, remove peel from oranges in long (about 3-inch) strips. Cut 1 peeled orange crosswise into thin slices; discard seeds. Reserve remaining peeled orange for another use. Combine orange peels, orange slices, wine, grain alcohol, sugar, and dried cherry bark (if using) in a large (about 48-ounce) sterilized lidded wide-mouth jar. Seal jar; shake to dissolve sugar. Let mixture steep in sealed jar at room temperature 40 days, gently shaking jar once per day. Pour vin d'orange classique through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a pitcher; discard solids. Pour into glasses, and serve at room temperature or over ice. Note Find culinary cherry bark online at herbco.com. Make Ahead Vin d'orange classique can be stored in a sealed wide-mouth jar in a cool, dark room for 2 to 3 years. Rate It Print Updated by Erik Eastman